Gian Carlo Menotti

Gian Carlo Menotti (1944), photographed by Carl Van Vechten

Gian Carlo Menotti (born July 7, 1911 in Cadegliano-Viconago , Lombardy ; † February 1, 2007 in Monte-Carlo ) was an Italian-American composer , primarily of operas . He also directed film adaptations of his own works ( The Medium , 1951; Goya , 1986) and worked as an opera director.

Life

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

Menotti was born in Cadegliano near Ponte Tresa on Lake Lugano as the son of a wealthy import merchant and developed an enthusiasm for operas at an early age. He wrote one of his first works at the age of eleven for a puppet theater. At the age of 13 he was accepted at the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi in Milan. In 1928 he continued his studies in the USA at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he studied composition with Rosario Scalero. He then taught there himself from 1933 to 1955, including seven years as head of the Composition & Theory Department . There was one among others, Lee Hoiby to his students.

Menotti in Paris

His first completed opera Amelia al Ballo / Amelia Goes to the Ball , premiered in 1937, made him so well known that it was even played at the Met in New York. Thereupon Menotti got from the television company NBC the order for a radio opera, which was played for the first time in 1939 ( The Old Maid and the Thief ). He then composed the opera The Island God , which was performed in New York in 1942.

Since his work The Medium (1946) he has been one of the most performed composers of the later 20th century . Other works from this period include The Telephone ( premier : New York, 1947) and The Consul (premier: Philadelphia, 1950), which is now regarded as the most important of his works and for which he, in the year of the premiere, the Pulitzer -Award received for music. For NBC he composed Amahl and the Night Visitors in 1951 , which was broadcast every Christmas in the United States for many years. A stage version of the work premiered in Bloomington the following year. In 1955 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Music for the second time for his opera The Saint of Bleecker Street .

In 1958, he called in the Italian town of Spoleto , the " Festival dei Due Mondi " (Festival of Two Worlds) to life, which distinguished itself by the discovery of long-forgotten operas and recent works, from 1977 there was the festival in Charleston (South Carolina) , 1986 also in Melbourne (Australia), which continues today as the Melbourne International Arts Festival . In 1953 Menotti was elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 1959 of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . Menotti handed over the management of the festival to his adoptive son Francis Menotti in 2001 and became honorary president. Francis didn't have his father's charisma. Charleston turned him down as artistic director and went into business for himself, in Spoleto Francis was removed from the board of directors after Menotti's death and the establishment of a festival foundation in 2008. Menotti himself took over the management of the opera house in Rome for two years in 1993.

His opera Goya , based on the famous Spanish painter Francisco de Goya , was created especially for the Spanish tenor Plácido Domingo , from whom he received the commission in 1977. It was premiered in Washington, DC in 1986 and adapted to Domingo's current vocal range for a series of performances in the summer of 2004 at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna.

Menotti also worked as an opera director. In 1973 he staged La Bohème by Giacomo Puccini at the Paris Opera and La Cenerentola by Gioachino Rossini at the Vienna State Opera in 1981 .

His longtime partner was the composer Samuel Barber . Menotti died in Monte-Carlo on February 1, 2007 at the age of 95.

Musical aesthetics

Menotti is one of the traditionalists, relies on the major / minor tonality and periodically manageable structures derived from it, which are always catchy and have a calculated effect. In the tradition of Giacomo Puccini , his melody formation is cantable and flowing.

For the stage works he uses a succinct, effective and stage-dramatically delightful tonal language that shows the influences of Kurt Weill and his friend Samuel Barber . The use of mostly contemporary templates gave these musical means an additional attraction, so that his works were accompanied by early success.

Since the late 1960s, however, the music criticism accused him of being “sensationalist and weak” ( Joseph Kerman  [en] ).

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

Single receipt missing, date: May 2020

Works

Operas

• Amelia goes to the ball (Amelia al Ballo / Amelia Goes to the Ball) (1937)
• The Old Maid and the Thief (The Old Maid and the Thief) , radio opera (1939)
• The Island God (1942)
• The medium (The Medium) (1946)
• The phone or Love for the third ( The Telephone, or L'Amour à trois ) (1947)
• The Consul (The Consul) (1950)
• Amahl and the Night Visitors , TV opera (1951), also as a stage version
• The Saint of Bleecker Street (1954)
• Maria Golovin (1958)
• The Death of the Bishop of Brindisi (1963)
• Labyrinth, television opera (1963)
• The Last Savage (1963)
• Martin's Lie (1964)
• Help, Help, the Globolinks ( Help, Help, the Globolinks! ) (1968)
• The Most Important Man (1971)
• Tamu-Tamu (1973)
• The Egg (1976)
• The Hero (1976)
• The Trial of the Gypsy (1978)
• Chip and his Dog (1979)
• Juana la Loca (1979)
• A Bride from Pluto (1982)
• The Boy Who Grew Too Fast (1982)
• Goya (1986)
• The Wedding (Giorno da Nozze) (1988)
• The Singing Child (1993)

In addition, Menotti wrote the libretto for Samuel Barber's opera Vanessa

ballet

• Sebastian (1944)

Orchestral works

• Concerto for piano and orchestra in F major (1945)
• Apocalisse , symphonic poem (1951)
• Concerto for violin and orchestra (1952)
• Triple Concerto a Tre for three concert groups of solo instruments and orchestra (1968)
• Fantasia for Cello and Orchestra (1975)
• Symphony No. 1 in A minor The Halcyon (1976)
• Concerto for double bass and orchestra (1983)
• Goya , suite for orchestra (1987)

Chamber music

• Suite for two violoncellos and piano (1973)
• Cantilena and Scherzo for string quartet and harp (1977)
• Trio for violin, clarinet and piano (1996)

literature

• Alfred Baumgartner: Propylaea World of Music - The Composers - A lexicon in five volumes . tape 4 . Propylaen Verlag, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-549-07830-7 , pp. 21 .
• John Gruen: Menotti: A Biography. Macmillan, New York 1978, ISBN 0-02-546320-9 .
• Michael Saffle:  Menotti, Gian Carlo. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Second edition, personal section, volume 11 (Lesage - Menuhin). Bärenreiter / Metzler, Kassel et al. 2004, ISBN 3-7618-1121-7 , Sp. 1655–1657 ( online edition , subscription required for full access)

Web links

• Gian Carlo Menotti in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• "Interview with Gian Carlo Menotti 2001" (German)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Honorary Members: Gian Carlo Menotti. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed March 16, 2019 . 
2. ↑ Andante: Gian Carlo Menotti at 90 ( Memento of the original from December 5, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.